The 4-Hour Workweek

Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Timothy Ferriss
20070424

About This Book

Forget the old concept of retirement and saving for the future – there is no need to wait and every reason not to. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing first-class world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with no management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint.

First and Foremost

The New Rich (NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility. This is an art and a science we will refer to as Lifestyle Design.

Tim opens each chapter with an explanation of the singular importance of being a “dealmaker.” The manifesto of the dealmaker is simple: Reality is negotiable. The DEAL of deal making is also an acronym for the process of becoming a member of the New Rich. Here is the step-by-step process you’ll use to reinvent yourself:

D for Definition turns misguided common sense upside down and introduces the rules and objectives of the new game. It replaces self-defeating assumptions and explains concepts such as relative wealth and eustress. Who are the NR and how do they operate? This section explains the overall lifestyle design recipe – the fundamentals – before we add the three ingredients.

E for Elimination kills the obsolete notion of time management once and for all. It shows exactly how Tim used the words of an often-forgotten Italian economist to turn 12-hours days into two-hour days… in 48 hours. Increase your per-hour results ten times or more with counterintuitive NR techniques for cultivating selective ignorance, developing a low-information diet, and otherwise ignoring the unimportant. This section provides the first of the three luxury lifestyle design ingredients: time.

A for Automation puts cash flow on autopilot using geographic arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of nondecision. From bracketing to the routines of ultrasuccessful NR, it’s all here. This section provides the second ingredient of luxury lifestyle design: income.

L for Liberation is the mobile manifesto for the globally inclined. The concept of mini-retirements is introduced, as are the means for flawless remote control and escaping the boss. Liberation is not about cheap travel; it is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location. This section delivers the third and final ingredient for luxury lifestyle design: mobility.

(Below will focus on Definition and Elimination.)

D is for Definition

What separates the New Rich, characterized by options, from the Deferrers, those who save it all for the end only to find that life has passed them by? It begins at the beginning. The New Rich can be separated from the crowd based on their goals, which reflect very distinct priorities and life philosophies.

Deferrers: To work for yourself.
New Rich: To have others work for you.

Deferrers: To work when you want to.
New Rich: To prevent work for work’s sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect (“minimum effective load”).

Deferrers: To retire early or young.
New Rich: To distribute recovery periods and adventures (mini-retirements) throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal. Doing that which excites you is.

Deferrers: To buy all the things you want to have.
New Rich: To do all the things you want to do, and be all the things you want to be. If this includes some tools and gadgets, so be it, but they are either means to an end or bonuses, not the focus.

Deferrers: To be the boss instead of the employee; to be in charge.
New Rich: To be neither the boss nor the employee, but the owner. To own the trains and have someone else ensure they run on time.

Deferrers: To make a ton of money.
New Rich: To make a ton of money with specific reasons and defined dreams to chase, timelines and steps included.

Deferrers: To have more.
New Rich: To have more quality and less clutter.

Deferrers: To reach the big pay-off, whether IPO, acquisition, retirement, or others.
New Rich: To think big but ensure payday comes every day: cash flow first, big payday second.

Deferrers: To have freedom from doing that which you dislike.
New Rich: To have freedom from doing that which you dislike, but also the freedom and resolve to pursue your dreams without reverting to work for work’s sake.

The following rules are the fundamental differentiators to keep in mind.

1. Retirement is worst-case-scenario insurance.
2. Interest and energy are cyclical.
3. Less is not laziness.
4. The timing is never right.
5. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
6. Emphasize strengths, don’t fix weaknesses.
7. Things in excess become their opposite.
8. Money alone is not the solution.
9. Relative income is more important than absolute income.
10. Distress is bad, eustress is good.

E is for Elimination

Here are two truisms to keep in mind:

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

Remember this: What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other:

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20 Rule).
2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.